Talk:Flower/@comment-43985317-20191001103637/@comment-53539-20200221105521
I acknowledge that, the issue is that most media is catered for a majority audience. This is fair because companies have to make money. If you appeal to a minority group and people don't by into it then the company looses money. This is why for example because of the likes of Halo in the 2000s FPS video games became popular because gamers wanted to play this genre more then platformers and first person view point in generally became the standard over 3rd person perspective until Indie gaming took off in the late 2000s because of Minecraft and a few other games. If a company has the choice between 75% of a market an 15% off the bat, they'll go for the 75% almost every time. There has never been a Vocaloid to represent the trans community, the closet we got was VY1/VY2, song interpretations and fan ones are just that. Even officially, yes Ryuto and Len are voiced by women but their still male. The Vocaloids are made to appeal to the existing markets, which prefer male and female, in Japan the market for females is governed by the fact that 4/5 of all producers are male and therefore buy female Vocaloid voices. Sure you can add fantasy elements like Avanna being an elf, Luo Tiyani being an angel, you can add sci fi elements like Big Al being a monster and Miku being an android. But a the end of the day the Vocaloids have always been catered to markets that are familar to something either being one thing or another. Representation is something people want... Yes... But its not certain right now it will sell. Another I want to bring up here is Merli. Merli was praised as being a dark-skinned Vocaloid and the first by a lot of fans, except as I pointed out, she still represents the Japanese just like the lighter skinned Japanese Vocaloids. In 2020 Merli barely has any fans interested in her despite all the fuss made of her in her release year by some fans. Like, great, you feel you have a representative... But where is your appreciation in 2020? Merli never represented say Arabic or Latino skin colouration, as I said she represents darker skinned Japanese. That and by the time Ruby came along, and finally people started to accept Leon and Lola represent black singers... What made Merli special faded. This is the risk that a trans Vocaloid can face as well. When looking at Vocaloids its more important to focus on the vocal being good and not to focus on what they represent because there is this risk of a short burst of excitement followed by "who cares" along the line. There is also the risk of because of cultural discrimination no one buying the vocal. The fact is that not buying a Vocaloid ends up being why a lot of companies won't take the risk in particular. Take for example Zero-G, its done well for its last 3 outtings, but it still it may not in a comfortable position to produce a Vocaloid voicebank that isn't male or female because its profits are driven by a fine line of success and failure. Vocaloid is a product that in 2007 expected to sell 1000 units and in 2020 no company is in a position to dream of 100,000 units like Miku V2 did even now. So profit drives things forward and even Internet co/. Ltd said after Kokone that it can't afford to release a male vocal, and this is a company thats seen better success then others in Vocaloid. Minority groups should feel sad their not representative and have every single dam right to. But there has to be an understanding that also there can't be full representation of every example of a human being in Vocaloid. This must come with time, and if people are willing to buy Vocaloids so the market can relax more and be prepared to take risks that it can't always take right now. You have to factor in that every Vocaloid has had Yamaha take a bite out of sales, that licensing to produce Vocaloids exists. Vocaloid is a niche market at best among the EDM music market. And its a market... That in 2020 isn't what it was either in 2010, we've lost a lot of traction in the last 5 years and Vocaloid is nowhere near as popular as it was in that time period. Trans is a very minority representation likely not even representing 1% of the total human population of the world. As I said, the closet we got was VY1 and VY2, but the vocals were still male and female even if the Vocaloids were not. And this is only because they have no mascots and were designed to be sold focused on Vocals and not a mascot. They were not trans representation, they were basically a pair of tools released so producers can warp a vocal how they wanted without having to worry about the mascot getting in the way. Basically to encourage creativity. So I know this is a lot to take in, but there is a lot of factors at play. Some of this is kinda hard to write up because its a "tough love" situation, the world isn't fair and never will be. But there are going to be people who can't accept that their special niche they represent isn't going to be represented on a big grand scale. And writing this tough stuff means I know full dam well some SJW will try and pick a fight with me for basically stating the truth as it represents right now. I do want things to be better though so we can see studios take risks more, but for the moment... I just want to see another V5 Vocaloid due to V5s current putting being small and quiet compared to V3 and V4. Welcome to the end of the Vocaloid era folks, Vocaloids not dead yet but its looking a bit green around the gills and for me... we need to see Vocaloid pick up again. Edit: Also, before someone brings up certain UTAU... UTAU is different because its existence doesn't rely on sales. UTAU has more freedom then Vocaloid to do what it wants because it has no pressure on its voicebanks developers to see money exchange in most cases, I mean there are a few Voices for sale but most are free. so developers of voicebanks can pretty much do as they please and get away with the risks Vocaloid will not have to face. Its very lucky to be able to do that and its one of the many advantages it has over Vocaloid. Edit: Also, the idea of Flower being believed as trans "doesn't hurt". Yes it does. Because when Flower is actually represented as female, there is far less incline to accept her yet thats what she is (edit: discrimination is not a one way thing). Just as a minority group can see bais towards it, the minority group can have disdain towards the majority group. Ergo, discrimination works both ways not one way. So yes, trans flower can actually hurt flower. Not majorly,but it can make it harder for people to take interest in her when people actually bother with her canon. Plus honestly, I've made the point many time, that trans =/= a personnelity. And if she is female or trans, its still a shallow representation of flower. for a fandom who follows a product encouraging creativity, we are some of the most uncreative fans... Whats her favourite colour... what animal does she like... etc...etc we can do so much better to fill out who Flower is then just changing her 1 line of canon to something else. I've had this same issue with VY2 and the people who just use Roro to represent him. Where is your creativity people?!?!?